How to Grow a Garden When You're Renting
A while ago I started asking people what their biggest gardening struggles are. Along with ‘not knowing where to start’ and ‘finding the time’, ‘living in a rental’ came out right at the top.
This is entirely understandable. Renting is impermanent and - at times - unpredictable. You might be beholden to the whims of your landlord, you’re generally not allowed to make any massive landscaping changes and anyway, why would you even want to invest your money and time in something that’s not yours and which you might have to abandon 6 months down the line?
I get it. BUT. I would like to take this opportunity to reframe the situation in two specific ways:
First, the impermanence issue. Yes, you won't be living there forever. And who’s to say whether or not the next people in the house are going to give two sods about gardens. One day, the whole block might be flattened for a development. It’s hard to get excited about something that seems so temporary. But you’re forgetting one thing that is not remotely temporary: you.
In creating a garden NOW, you are giving yourself many extra years to acquire valuable gardening knowledge and experience that will last your entire lifetime. No matter what happens to your first garden, or your second, or your third, every single time you start again you are becoming a better and more knowledgable gardener. And, when you finally do find a place to put down your literal and proverbial roots, you’ll be able to create an infinitely smarter and more beautiful garden because of everything you’ve already learned.
Second, the ‘why waste my time on something that’s not mine’ issue. Indulge me while I get existential for a moment. When it actually comes down to it, nothing in this world truly is ours. Not forever, anyway. Everything is ultimately impermanent and all we ever really have is the illusion of control. I’ve been lucky enough to have a place where I can create a pretty permanent garden without fear of having to leave anytime soon. But I know that if our block was sold there’s almost no chance our garden would survive. Old houses in this area are knocked down and instantly replaced with concrete cubes and swimming pools.
My grandparents built their house and garden in the 50s. They put everything into it. In 1957, they won first prize in an annual gardening competition. Forty years later they moved into a retirement home and watched helplessly as the garden they had poured countless hours of love into was dug up, and their family home flattened. It sucks. But it is also worth remembering that all these things we call ‘ours’ are only ever ours for brief windows of time. After all, in approximately 5.5 billion years the sun will run out of hydrogen gas to burn and will begin a steady process of expansion until it envelopes - and vaporises - the earth (and all of our gardens along with it). The question isn’t how to hold onto something forever. It’s what can we do with it in the brief - and very precious time - that' it’s ours.
Enjoying this plant-rant?
I have plenty more where it came from!
If you’d like to enjoy weekly gardening tips, plant-rants, seasonal recipes and leafy inspiration, type your email in below.
Renters face a vastly sped-up version of this predicament, which makes it all the more frustrating (I mean, obviously anything is vastly sped up if you’re considering it against the timeframe of the lifespan of our sun…). But, in a world where people are forgetting the value of gardens, every renter has the opportunity to leave behind a little statement at each house they vacate. A tree, slowly growing in a back corner of the garden. A pruned rose. Bulbs that reappear each spring. Imagine if it became the norm for all renters to throw themselves into their gardens, no matter how long or short their lease. How exciting it would be moving into a new place, to discover what botanical beauties the last tenants had left for you. Or how grateful you might be that years ago someone planted a tiny tree, fully aware that they would never be the one to see it grow tall.
The famous ‘Greek proverb’ (which is actually not a Greek proverb but an oft-misattributed quote from a quaker in 1951) says:
‘a man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.’
Let’s all make a start on discovering the meaning of human life!!! Tenants, landlords, homeowners! People in tiny flats! Grannies in retirement villages! Students in rambling share houses! Kids in primary schools! Babies in daycare! CEOs in the city! Come hither! We’ll never know how long we’ve got. Let’s grow gardens everywhere together right now and make the world green and beautiful for ourselves, for each other, for the insects, the birds and for future generations! And, more than anything else, for the pure joy that is gardening.
Ok! Now my proselytising is over and I shall give you some actual practical advice. Here’s how to grow a garden when you’re renting.
The key features of the rental garden are flexibility and transportability. In all the tips that follow, I want to show you how you can maximise these essential features while still growing a beautiful and productive garden. It can be done! It can be done really well! Starting with…
1. Containers
Almost all the advice you find online for growing a rental garden starts with 'use containers’… Because it is good, solid advice. Containers are absolutely one of the best ways to grow a rental garden. They offer the flexibility of being able to take your garden with you when you move, and you can grow SO many plants (probably more than you think) in containers, provided they are big enough. There are a few common reasons people don’t succeed with container planting.
First, the containers are just too small. When you’re just starting a garden it can be easy to really underestimate how much root space your plants need. What’s more, a lot of the indoor plants we commonly see growing in pots actually like to have constrained roots, so they can tolerate much smaller pots than, say, a zucchini or broccoli could.
If you want to grow outdoor plants (especially veggies) in containers, the width and depth of the pot becomes important. Go bigger rather than smaller. If you have been growing a plant in the same pot for a while and it seems to stall out and stop growing, it may be becoming root bound. Check to see if roots are poking out of the hole at the bottom of the pot. If they are, it may need moving on to a bigger pot with a fresh top-up of potting mix.
Second, soil in containers dries out and degrades faster than soil in garden beds. Poor soil = unhealthy plants, and can lead to many garden frustrations. Fortunately, this is a pretty easy fix. Always use a good quality potting mix. Potting mixes contain a higher concentration of slow-release fertilisers than regular soil, helping to feed your plants for longer. They are also designed to be fairly light-weight and free-draining, helping prevent your plants from getting waterlogged in their pots. If you’re growing hungry plants in your pots (like fast-growing veggies, citrus or roses), you will need to feed your plants regularly - liquid fertilisers can be handy in this instance, or you can just put a few handfuls of a well-rotted manure into the pot every now and then. If you grow a big veggie whose roots fill up the entire container it will likely have used up all the nutrients in the soil. When it comes to replanting a new plant in the same pot, you’ll want to use new potting mix that hasn’t been stripped of nutrients.
Third, pots are placed in areas where they’re unable to drain. If you put a pot directly on a garden bed (or even on a flat brick surface) any water that enters the pot won’t be able to drain out properly. This isn’t such a problem with small pots, but with heavier pots this can cause water logging in the pot, leading to root rot. And don’t even get me started on those pots that DON’T EVEN HAVE HOLES. Whoever invented them is a psychopath. If you have pots without holes (and you want to actually plant something in them instead of just sticking a plastic pot inside them) drill holes in them NOW!
Hole-less pots accumulate a pool of water at the bottom which is bad for nearly every plant you want to grow. So holes must be added. To avoid cracking the pot when drilling the hole you can use a masonry drill bit and stand the pot upright on top of a shock-absorbing surface (lawn works well), then drill down through the base. In most instances this works just fine, but if the pot is an heirloom, hand crafted by your great great grandmother on the eve of her wedding… maybe leave it alone… It could always be a handy dandy pencil holder?!
Fourth, pots aren’t watered enough. Soil in pots dries out much faster than soil in the ground, so it’s important to make sure your pots are well watered. I have a lot of pots in my garden, but I avoid constant hand watering by placing them in the spots that get reticulated from the lawn sprinklers. If your rental has reticulation aim to put your pots where they’ll receive sprinkler water (as well as hand watering on hot days).
Taking care of pot size, soil and water, and making sure that your pots are positioned in spots that receive adequate sun should help guarantee you have happy container plants. So now here’s the fun bit. See, provided the soil, sun and water are taken care of, pretty much anything can be a vessel for plants. The world is your oyster! (note that given a small enough plant, you could even use an oyster shell as a container!)
Here’s an entirely non-exhuastive list of everything I have ever used as a plant-container, to give you some ideas for your own garden.
Wheelbarrows with holes in them
Metal milk jugs
A giant conch shell
Ice buckets
Teacups
Random clay vessels from op shops
Metal garbage bins
Wooden pallet boxes
Tin cans
Plus many, many terracotta pots that I’ve scavenged from verge collections
Really anything that holds soil and doesn’t hold water is perfect!
Note that if you are gardening in a limited space it’s worth looking for square or rectangular containers - these can be fitted together more easily and take up less space than a bunch of round pots or weirdly shaped found objects! If space is not an issue, let your imagination run wild. Salvaged pots, hessian bags, even kiddy pools with holes drilled in the base will be great for growing shallow-rooted plants!
2. Plants for containers
It seems only fitting that now we should discuss what you can actually grow in your containers. Happily, almost everything can grow just fine in a container, provided it’s big enough.
Some of my favourite plants to grow in containers include: tomatoes, herbs (in my experience most herbs actually do better in pots than in the ground, with parsley, rosemary, tansy and lavender as a few notable exceptions), succulents, potatoes, radishes, rocket, silverbeet, chillies, lettuces and carrots (carrots have done way better for me in large pots than in the ground because I have better control over the soil quality).
When working out what kinds of plants to put in your containers, root depth is important to consider. Before planting, it’s a good idea to google ‘plant x root depth’ to find out just how deep your plant wants to spread its roots. As a general rule, even shallow-rooted plants (like corn, leeks and lettuces) want to be in pots at least 45cm deep, and many bigger plants (like tomatoes, artichokes and rhubarb) thrive in pots that are at least 90cm deep.
If you want to grow some trees (and don’t want to leave them there for the next tenant), half-wine barrels make ideal planting vessels and can accommodate dwarf citrus, bay trees, curry-leaf trees and many others for several years before you need to consider shifting the trees to a larger growing space.
3. Landscaping a rental
You might think that living in a rental means you can’t do anything to change the landscape of a garden. Not so! Often what rental gardens lack is any kind of structure - they’re one big glob of garden, with no sections or form. This can be fixed by adding a few semi-permanent structures.
Salvaged pavers can be incorporated into your garden to create temporary pathways. These help divide the space and create a sense of flow through the garden. And - because they can simply be placed down onto the grass and removed before leaving - they’re a perfectly impermanent fixture that you can take with you!
When I was working out the layout of my garden, temporary pavers were so handy!
A few other structural elements that can be used and taken with you when you leave are bird baths (these are the best addition to any garden - they are so wonderful for encouraging wildlife), metal archways (these do wonders to divide spaces in a garden) and large pots (for your big veggies or trees). You’d be amazed at how a handful of pavers lain out across a lawn, leading to an archway surrounded by pots can transform an empty garden into something colourful and interesting.
4. Irrigation
Many rentals don’t have good reticulation systems, or, at best, have irrigated lawns and not much else. Now, it’s worth mentioning that my pie in the sky ‘plant trees for future generations’ perspective does not extend to garden reticulation. Garden retic SUCKS and there is noooo way I’m reticulating any space that I’m not going to live in for at least a decade! That said, there’s an easy fix if you have plants you’d like to water - get a sprinkler fitting that can attach to a garden hose. I used one of these in our garden for YEARS (before Luke moved in and fixed the retic for me). It was cheap and it worked fine. You just drag it around any of the sections you want to water. If you want to go pro with your reticulation you can also get a tap timer to schedule the watering for you!
5. Grow moveable plants
The truth is, you don’t actually have to have everything in pots. Depending on the relationship you have with your landlord (or, rather, how often they visit to check what you’re up to), there are plenty of plants you can grow direct in the soil and shift later.
First off, you can grow annuals. Annuals last only one season before setting seed for the following year so you can simply plant them direct in the ground, enjoy them for the season and then you collect the seeds to save and plant in some future location the following year. Theories of humanity’s first gardens suggest our early nomadic ancestors did exactly this - once they realised seeds held the potential to become great, lush gardens they simply took handfuls of seeds with them every time they moved, beginning their gardens anew each time. The best thing is, most of the edible veggies you’ll ever want to grow in your garden ARE annuals - tomatoes, broccoli, lettuces, cabbages, zucchinis, pumpkins, watermelons, peas, beans - the list goes on. So if you’re allowed to put things in the ground you’ve got heaps of wonderful semi-permanent annuals to choose from!
You can also select plants that are easily propagated (for instance monsteras, pelargoniums, succulents and devils ivy). Plant them direct into the garden and when time comes to move you can just take a few cuttings with you to make more. Even things like banana trees produce ‘pups’ (new baby banana trees) each year, which can be dug up and taken to your next place. You’ll be like some kind of green saint, leaving clones of plants like trails of leafy breadcrumbs behind you wherever you go!!
If you know you’ll be spending a full year in your rental property, you can also plant bulbs! For what it’s worth, bulbs also do really well in pots. But if you’ve got the time and want to pop them in the ground you can easily enjoy a season of flowers before digging the bulbs up and taking them with you to your next place.
Last, you can grow plants that go through dormant periods where they can easily be transplanted. Roses and some dwarf fruit trees can be shifted easily in winter without suffering too much transplant shock. I mean… admittedly you would somehow have to ensure you only ever sign leases that end in winter…but other than that I see this plan as foolproof!! That said, there are plenty of plants that are hardy enough to be transplanted in autumn, winter and spring without too much damage. A few of my favourites include Dusty Miller, pelargoniums, succulents, wormwood and tractor seat plants. With a little care, these can be dug up and taken with you when you move.
6. Never be deterred
Finally, one piece of advice. Never let living in a rental stop you from enjoying growing living things. Remember that where there is a will and a love of gardening you can absolutely always find a way. Don’t believe me? I will end this blog post with a story about a friend of a friend of mine.
This fellow liked to garden. Not only did he like to garden, but he had gardened long and often enough that he had come to appreciate one of the main tenets of gardening: a great garden starts with healthy soil. So, when he moved into his rental, he fully committed. He got tonnes of soil, manure, compost and mulched shipped in and spread it through his garden. He proceeded to grow some of the most beautiful plants and enjoyed his lush, green rental for days, weeks, months. Until the time came to shift house. At which point he hired a truck, dug up the entire six inches of top soil he’d brought into his garden in the first place, and took it all with him!
If you love gardening, don’t let anything stop you! It is a passion fully worth indulging throughout all the changing circumstances of your life.
Also, for any of you with a landlord who is a bit of a dick… I’ve found that sweet potato vines, once planted, are almost impossible to eradicate.
You didn’t hear it from me.
